Valhalla Gold

CHAPTER EIGHT

Their private jet touched down on Runway 13 of Keflavik International Airport and taxied through the drizzly half-light to a gate on the north side. After a short conversation en route between Lea and Sir Richard Eden they had made the decision that Hawke, Lea and Victoria would drive into Reykjavík and meet with his old friend, a Dr Gunnar Jónsson, while Ryan and Scarlet stayed with the plane and refuelled ready for whatever came next.

On the flight, Eden had briefed them that Vincent Reno had identified the images of the man taken by Ryan back in the Florida Keys. He confirmed his name was indeed Leon Smets, a former French Foreign Legion Warrant Officer thrown out of the service for brutality against junior ranks, including Vincent when he was a raw recruit. The other men were assorted corporals all of whom were now out of the Legion and working as mercenaries alongside Smets.

Vincent, who was making amends with his wife in Marseille, was unable to help them with the shaven-headed woman, but Alex had worked her magic on that score and identified her as one Dasha Vetrov, the younger sister of Maxim Vetrov, the man ECHO had dispatched in the Tomb of Eternity. It looked like she had joined with Smets and whoever was pulling his strings to get her revenge on Hawke and the others. Eden was certain they would both be working for someone else, but for now that person was unidentified. He also thought it significant that she hadn’t killed them all when she had the chance in the Florida Keys.

Now, Lea was thinking Reykjavík looked a lot like St John’s in Newfoundland — both cities were around the same size and the brightly colored clapboard houses added to the feeling of similarity as their taxi cruised the short distance into Miðbær, the downtown district. This was as far north as civilization got — a first-world state with an advanced economy of fish-processing and metals exports, all tucked away in a country whose north coast skirted the Arctic Circle. As they got closer to the center, she watched the sun skim the horizon out on the Westfjords.

“Nearly two in the morning and the sun’s still up.”

Hawke opened one eye and looked at her for a second before closing it again. “Fascinating.”

“Heathen.”

They reached Dr Jónsson’s address and Lea told the cab driver to pull over. Victoria paid him in American dollars and he grumbled before trundling away into the midnight sun. Then they walked up the steps to the professor’s front door and rang the bell.

“If you weren’t the one showing me this, Lea,” the middle-aged academic said quietly, “I would think it was all some kind of joke.” Gunnar Jónsson stared at the glass bead for a long time, mesmerized by it as it gave the effect of being able to look through his own hand. “Look! I can see the sheepskin rug right through my own hand — like it wasn’t even there!”

“Not like it wasn’t there,” Hawke said. “It’s there all right — but it’s invisible.”

“It’s… amazing.”

“I felt the same thing back in St. John’s when I first held it in my hand, too,” Lea said, peering over Jónsson’s shoulder at the strange, sparkling bead.

Jónsson looked away from the bead for the first time and fixed his eyes on Lea. “This is an absolutely huge discovery, and of course I would do anything to help you, but what exactly is going on? Richard was vague, as usual.”

Hawke stepped forward. “We need to know all you know about Norse mythology.”

Gunnar laughed. “It has taken me twenty years to know what I know, but I’ll do my best.”

“You can start with what you think this bead is.”

Gunnar looked at them, astonished. “Looking at the hook on the rear, which is obviously designed to fix it to something, it can only be one thing — a small bead from the legendary Tarnkappe!”

“The legendary what now?” Lea asked.

Gunnar looked up at them one at a time and smiled. “We’re going to need some coffee — please, make yourselves comfortable by the fire while I make some and then I will tell you all about it.”

Victoria peered around the door and watched Gunnar as he banged and clattered around in his old kitchen in the pursuit of fresh coffee and loftkökur while loudly whistling a bombastic classical tune.

Hawke turned to Lea. “Is this guy for real?”

She nodded and smiled. “Sorry, but yes. Gunnar is one of a kind, for sure. According to Rich, he knows more than anyone on earth about Norse mythology, but if you think you can bundle him around the planet in search of treasure and adventure then think again. He’s a great guy and all but he has only one gear, and that’s slow.”

“Excellent,” Hawke said, sighing. “That’ll come in handy when we’re being chased and shot at… and what is that bloody awful tune he’s whistling?”

Victoria looked at Hawke shocked. “Why, it’s Wagner of course — Götterdämmerung.”

“Eh?”

“Twilight of the Gods, Mr Hawke. He’s whistling the opening to it — as Siegfried emerges from the cave.”

“Do tell me more,” Hawke said sarcastically.

Victoria smirked. “If you had any sort of education you’d realize the significance.”

“The significance of what?” said Gunnar.

They turned to see him standing in the door with a tray laden with coffee cups and a shiny tin of biscuits.

“Siegfried,” Hawke said, giving Victoria a sly glance.

“Ah — a man of culture!” Gunnar said in his melodic Icelandic accent. “I knew it as soon as I saw you.”

“I try my best,” Hawke said with another flick of the eyes to the English archaeologist.

Victoria started to speak. “Hang on, you just said…”

Hawke interrupted Victoria before she could finish her sentence. “As I said earlier, Gunnar — we really need your help — so perhaps you could explain for Lea here the significance of Siegfried.”

Lea rolled her eyes as she took a coffee and relaxed back in her chair.

“Well, yes of course… Siegfried was in two of Wagner’s operas, but Wagner himself took the character straight from German folklore, and that of course derived from the ancient Norse mythology.”

“See, Lea?” Hawke said. “I told you.”

“Listen, Josiah, if you…”

“Please, Gunnar, continue,” Hawke said with a wink at the Irishwoman.

“As one of the most legendary heroes of the entire Norse mythological canon, Siegfried, or Sigurd, as we call him, is central to the folklore of all the Scandinavian nations. Here in Iceland we have the famous Völsunga saga, an eight hundred year-old saga featuring him. As I say, he is central to the folklore.”

“But,” Hawke said, taking a sip of coffee, “and I know Lea will want to know the answer to this question more than anyone — what has this glass bead got to do with Sigurd?”

“It’s obvious to anyone who knows the legend, Mr Hawke — and I already told you earlier when I mentioned the Tarnkappe.”

“Ah, yes…”

“The Tarnkappe was Sigurd’s secret power — the power he used in the Nibelungenlied to help Gunther beat the Queen of Iceland in a javelin-throwing competition.”

“Am I on drugs or something?” Lea asked, confused.

Gunnar ignored the comment. “The Tarnkappe gave him the power to win.”

“Like some kind of protein shake then?” Lea said.

Gunnar stared at her expressionless for a moment. “No… Sigurd’s secret power was the Tarnkappe — the Cloak of Invisibility, and I believe this bead was once part of that cloak — proving once and for all that the legends were more than just myth, and that all of these legendary heroes really existed!”

“You mean Sigurd was real?” Victoria said, astonished.

Gunnar held out the bead. “If this is real, then why not?”

“But if Sigurd was real,” Victoria said, her voice hushing to a whisper barely audible over the sound of the crackling fire, “then Thor must be real as well — just what Nate was talking about. Maybe this means that even… Valhalla was real!”

A heavy silence fell over the small room as the implications of Victoria’s words sunk in, but then Gunnar broke the tension with a smile and a vigorous shake of the head. “No… no I think that might be taking things a little far. I am ever-cautious and I think now would be as good a time as any to pull back and not jump the gun, as you say.”

“But she could be right,” Lea said.

“No… really, I must insist.” Gunnar set his coffee cup down and scratched his chin absent-mindedly. He pulled off his glasses and polished them with the hem of his jumper. “There’s deduction, and extrapolation, and then there’s this… Just because we have a strange bead which seems to have the power of invisibility, and just because Sigurd had an invisible cloak, doesn’t mean we can infer the existence of one of the world’s most famous mythological locations. I think this is going too far.”

“But just imagine,” Victoria said. “Speaking as an archaeologist I can say it would be the greatest discovery of all history.”

“Perhaps, but it’s wise to be cautious.”

“But you’re the one who said the bead must belong to some kind Harry Potter cape,” Lea said. “If that’s not a leap then what is?”

Gunnar smiled. “Yes… I am guilty of that, I admit — but what else could it be? If what you say is true then this bead was found in a small Canadian fishing village and is thousands of years old. Even today this technology is only in its most basic form and nothing as efficient and amazing as this.”

“Which is exactly what Ryan told us,” Hawke said.

“Whatever civilization produced this bead was far ahead of ours in technological terms.”

“And you think it could be evidence of Sigurd’s Cloak of Invisibility?” Lea asked.

“Yes, but…” said Gunnar apologetically, “unless you have more information it’s very hard for me to give any more assistance.”

“Wait!” Hawke said. “Lea — After Smets stole the flash-drive, Alex sent your father’s research to your iPhone, yes?”

Lea took out her phone and started to scroll through the research files Alex had re-sent after her flash-drive was stolen in Florida. Gunnar watched in amazement as the text and images flashed by in front of his eyes.

“I’ve never seen so many references to the old Norse culture,” he said. “This is a treasure trove in itself! It seems to be focussed on stories about healing. How did your father get this information?”

Lea shook her head and sighed. “I don’t know… yet.”

“Wait — go back!”

She looked at the professor and then began to scroll backwards. “What did you see?”

Gunnar gave an innocent grin and almost jumped up and down on the spot with excitement.

“There’s something here — but it’s written in a very old Runic script.”

“I know — I couldn’t understand any of it.”

“But I can read it,” Gunnar said. “I’ve spent my life working on this.” His voice became a whisper. “I thought I was the only one…”

“You can translate this?” Lea asked.

Gunnar nodded. “Yes… my understanding of this script is not complete, but almost. Here are my notes.”

He handed Lea a scrappy notebook. She leafed through the dog-eared pages and saw endless scrawls of the strange symbols with heavy annotation in Icelandic.

Hawke looked at Gunnar. “So what does it say?”

“It’s a reference to Basque raiding parties in Newfoundland.”

“Raiding parties?”

Gunnar nodded his head and smiled. “We’ve always known about the connection between Atlantic Canada and the Vikings, and consequently what connects that part of the world with Norse mythology, and we’ve also always known about the seventeenth century raiding parties from Europe who sailed the Atlantic looking for new lands to plunder, but this is something else!”

“Go on.”

Gunnar peered closer at the text on the phone. “This looks like a description of an account given by the raiding party in question. It says that in the case of the Mi’kmaq culture and territory of Newfoundland, one specific raiding party was a Spanish frigate crewed by Basques, and there seems to be an obscure reference to…” Gunnar stopped and looked at the strange script with a furrowed brow. “I think it’s referring to something they described as a kind of cloak made of hardened water. They said when they held it to the sky they could still see the clouds. This is clearly the same thing we have here in this room now, only they describe an entire garment made of it!”

“You think the raiding party found this Tarnkappe?” Hawke said.

Gunnar nodded enthusiastically. “Yes, my friend! If this script is right then yes — absolutely!”

“Wait a minute,” Lea said. “Most of the research in Dad’s files was written in English, and a little was in Irish too, but that weird Runic stuff I presumed he’d copied from somewhere else. If it’s mentioning Basque raiding parties in the seventeenth century it couldn’t have been written by ancient Norse gods.”

Gunnar looked at her with surprise on his face. “No, of course not. This was written by your father. It is signed by him here — Henry Donovan.”

Lea felt like the world had stopped spinning. As Gunnar’s words sank in, the astonishment she felt grew like a tidal wave until she thought she was going to drown. The implications of his words immediately struck her like an ice-pick. “But… how did Dad know all this? It all sounds so far fetched.”

“Not at all! As I say, that part of Newfoundland was raided and looted by the Basques in the 1650s. This is common knowledge. It’s perfectly possible that they discovered Sigurd’s cloak, left behind by the Vikings centuries earlier, and took it back to their homeland.”

“So where exactly did they take it?”

“That’s why this script is so important. It says that when they returned to Spain they sold the cloak to a very rich merchant.” Gunnar peered at the screen as he made the translation. “A Francisco de la Cosa.”

“Never heard of him.”

Gunnar carefully finished the script and smiled. “Me neither — he doesn’t seem to be an historical figure, but according to the script he was a very rich man and over the years he bought many interesting and exotic items from both raiding parties and legitimate explorers. This says that he kept them in a vault at his castillo in northern Spain, and guess what?”

“Surprise us,” Lea said.

Gunnar checked the script one more time. “At the time your father wrote this the castillo was still standing and there’s a better than good chance that it’s still standing to this day, and I would bet it’s still in the hands of the de la Cosa family! Your father seemed to think that they were considered to possess one of the finest private fine art collections in the world.”

“So you think they’ve still got the cloak?”

Gunnar shrugged. “I don’t know, but would you give something like that away?” He paused for a moment and stared unblinking at the text. “Woah!”

“What’s up, Gunnar?” Hawke asked.

“There seems to be an oblique reference here to the Axe of Baldr.”

“What’s that?”

“Baldr was Thor’s brother — another son of Odin and Frigg. A fragment of what is supposed to be his axe is in Sweden today, but most of it is missing. According to this, it claims the axe was reputed to contain an inscription which would lead to Thor’s… this can’t be right.”

“Don’t tell me,” Hawke said. “Thor’s tomb, right?”

“Yes, but perhaps my translation is wrong. Surely they mean temple.”

“No, Gunnar,” Lea sighed. “They surely do not mean temple, believe me.”

Hawke rubbed his eyes. “Just what the hell do these maniacs want with Thor’s tomb? Gunnar, does it say if that raiding party ever got hold of the axe?”

“No, but…”

“But maybe there’s a chance,” Lea said.

“In other words…” Victoria’s words drifted into the crackling fire.

“In other words,” Hawke said coolly, “if we want to find the rest of this cloak, and maybe even this axe — and wherever that leads us — then our best shot is Basque country.”

“So let’s get out of here,” Lea said.

“Wait,” said Gunnar. “If you’re researching Thor and Valhalla you’ll need a copy of the Gesta Hammaburgensis ecclesiae pontificum.”

Hawke looked at Victoria. “Is he speaking English or Icelandic?”

She rolled her eyes. “It’s the Deeds of the Bishop of Hamburg.”

“What’s Hamburg got to do with it?”

“You’ll find out,” Gunnar said, and rummaged around on his shelf before handing them a thin document. “Here it is.”

Hawke took it from him and glanced at it. “Right… excellent… brilliant. But this is written in Latin.”

Gunnar frowned. “I couldn’t find one in Icelandic. Read it before you get to Spain because it could be of some use. It describes Thor’s temple at Uppsala in great detail and might have some other important clues. If you have any problems, then call me.”

“No need for that, Gunnar,” Hawke said. “You’re coming with us.”